Some specialists would prefer that we called drones by their official name, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. However, UAV journalism doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as ‘drone journalism’, which according to participants at a seminar in Oxford this week [22 October] could be the industry’s next major technical development.

This is drone journalism in action: a piece on Nebraska’s drought produced by the Drone Journalism Lab at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s College of Journalism and Mass Communications.

UAVs fitted with cameras may be “unmanned” on the aircraft itself, but they will need considerable human resourcing, with a capable pilot on the ground, and additional support.

With all those opportunities also come various big questions: how will widespread and mainstream use of UAVs for journalism be controlled and regulated? How should news organisations treat third-party content? What are the associated privacy and data protection issues?

The event at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism brought together specialists from the UAV industry, representatives from a number of news organisations, media lawyers, academics and aviation regulators to discuss these and other questions.

Meeja Law

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